


Progression

by Anamakorga



Category: Into the Woods - Sondheim/Lapine
Genre: F/M, Gen, Magic, Magic is the Important Tag Here, Not Cannon Divergence Technically but Probably Not How You Interpreted Last Midnight, Spoiler Alert Sorry She Dies, The Baker is a Sweetie He's Just Also Highkey a Dumbass, The Major Character Death is for the Baker's Wife
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 03:24:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21129971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anamakorga/pseuds/Anamakorga
Summary: The Baker's experiences with magic have never been good.





	Progression

It started when he was ten, young and impressionable and far too friendly for his own good. He'd climbed over the fence after finding it to have no doors and curious about his mysterious neighbour. 

He'd padded along the grass, lean and light. He was fearless up until he came to the first step of the stairs up to the Witch's door. 

A wave of dread washed over him, clammy and artificial. With another step came the feeling that he'd received a bad shock, and he felt his heart rate jump. The third, final step was accompanied by terror. It ripped at his young nerves, deep and gashing and awful, but he couldn't move away. He was frozen in fear for what must have been a good half hour before he finally regained his ability to reason. 

He knocked tentatively on the old birch door, and it creaked open in front of him onto barren living space. 

He called a faint greeting into an empty room. It was decorated only by a wooden table and some chairs, more birch. The only thing that seemed to even attempt to shed a glimmer of life into the barren space was a thin woven rug in the centre of the floor, around the edges of which he could see the outlines of a poorly hidden chalk circle. 

He called out again, louder this time, making sure to add that he had come from the house next door. 

It was hardly a second after he finished his sentence that an old woman, tall and hideously thin had appeared in the doorway. 

Her cloak behind her seemed to stretch on around the house, draping over furniture, and, in some places, nought but air itself. 

She inquired his living location, as though suspicious of the way he had said it only a minute before, and he had restated it for her. 

She had bid him leave, though not in the kind way anyone else had ever to him. Even his mother, even in moments when he had foolishly asked for information about his father, had used that tone of voice with him before. 

He told her he had simply come to ask her name and to perhaps make sure she was real. 

He did not see her move, and yet as he clutched at his cheek, trying to make sense of the now spinning world, he _felt as_ though she had simply taken a step forward and struck him across the face. 

Again, she bade him leave. 

He was gone, out the door and down the steps of fear and not to even consider going back until nearly seven years later. 

* * *

While the two of them crunch through the snow, his betrothed asks him who he lives next to. 

He tells her that it is a witch, and he is not wrong. She is curious, naturally, as many are when confronted with magic for the first time. 

She asks him what he has seen of her, and he tries very hard to convince her that it is not a matter worth pursuing, but she, more determined and headstrong than he will ever be, presses the matter and before either of them know it they are climbing over the garden fence. 

The garden is empty, this time of year, and they sink into the soft soil beneath their feet. 

She goes up the steps before him, and it shakes him almost more than her to see her standing straight up on the second step while silent tears roll down her cheeks. 

He places a tentative hand on her shoulder, and she jumps, recovering shakily and rubbing at her now-red eyes. 

The two continue upwards and step into a room more vacant of life than most rooms have any right to be. There is but a single rocking chair in the far corner, and a series of circular patterns are burned into the floor. 

They step further in, the floorboards creaking far too loudly to be normal. Foolishly, perhaps, they decide not to let it worry them. 

She passes through the circle in the centre of the room, or, perhaps more accurately, _tries to_ pass through the circle in the centre of the room. There is a shock as she attempts to exit the circle once she has entered it. 

Neither of them properly remembers what happened next, but there is something that makes them shy away from really questioning it. What they do know is that since that day neither of them has referred to the other by a proper name since. It keeps them away from magic until they have no choice in the matter. 

* * *

Even now as he is now an adult, the Witch stands a head over the Baker. It makes logical sense, of course – most people are taller than him, he is something of a short man – but it makes her no less imposing as she stands in his doorway, cloak rising into the air behind her like the feathers of a peacock. 

It is his Wife who inquires the Witch’s purpose. 

The Witch answers her question with another question and asks the two of them, voice like crunching on a rat’s nest, whether they have been successful in having a child. 

Both of their trains of thought stop and restart, on the exact same track, staring up at the Witch. Her facial expression betrays nothing of her emotions. The Baker can practically hear the gears turning in his Wife’s head. 

The Witch tells them a tale, a story of thieving fathers and cursed beans and barren family trees. 

He feels his insides twist as she reaches out and taps his chest with her staff. The feeling that’s always been in the back of his head grows stronger, building up inside of him until he feels sick with it. 

He is stuck, frozen with fear, glued to the floor of his own house as his own weight becomes too much for him and he drops to his knees. 

He can feel his Wife’s arms as she rushes to him, wrapping herself around him as he collapses. 

His vision blurs, black and purple flowers blooming before him. 

He can hear his Wife demanding something or another, and they need some ridiculous collection of objects to have a child, but he can’t make out the words, though he can hear them being repeated over and over into his ear, under the breath of his closest confidant as she held him up against herself. 

Then the Witch is gone, and he falls back into the arms of his Wife as everything goes black. 

* * *

The Baker travels through the wood on foot and makes it to the tail end of a conversation between a little girl and an enormous grey wolf, fully prepared to step in should anything be about to happen to the little girl. 

Once the two of them at the very least part ways, he wonders aloud to himself whether harm will come to her, absentmindedly mentioning her red cape in her description before realizing that this is perhaps the cape as red as blood that the Witch spoke of. 

Then she is there, just as old and wizened as always, but there is a certain frantic air to her now as she and her animate cape stalk towards him through the wood, neither quite touching the ground. 

He takes a futile step back, leaves crunching beneath his hunter’s boots. There was always a feeling of fear associated with the Witch, but since her visit, it has grown into a sense of terror, cold and sharp in a way that shakes him to his core. 

She is before him faster than he would ever have been able to run. 

He asks her if any harm should come to the girl. 

He feels magic crawl up his veins and digs itself in, piercing through matter and mind and before he can even think to shake himself free it has its hold on him. 

It pulls him forward, and he stumbles over a rotting branch half-buried in the dirt. 

She is in his face; he can feel her overlong purple hair on his own shoulders as she leans over him. 

She tells him that he is to get the cape in such a way that implies that his conscience is not a matter of consideration in this situation. It’s not quite to him, either, more to the magic that puppets him. 

His vision goes fuzzy, the world blurring around him. His body moves of its own accord, and he can hear himself interacting with the girl, but he can’t quite make out what words are coming from his mouth. 

The cape is in his hands, and she is screaming. 

He is running from her, and she is screaming. 

Screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming. 

There is a wave of nausea that rolls, freezing, over him as he forces the magic down and shakily hands the girl back her cape. 

* * *

The cow is eating the objects. 

He holds the slipper to her mouth, and she chomps down on it like that little girl on those sticky buns. 

Then the hair, which is greasy and tangled, not that any less would be expected from anyone with that much of it. 

Finally the cape, which seems more edible, but is stained and sticky, but still just as red as blood. 

There is the Witch, oddly tall and commanding for what she is, taking up far more space than it feels as though she should. 

There is a pause in the frantic air as Jack milks the cow. 

Then the ingredients are wrong. 

Why are the ingredients wrong?   
But the Witch has touched the hair, and he thinks that is her own fault, but he can’t say that, no matter how he would like to. 

There is that man, who has been seemingly everywhere over the past few days. 

He shoves the ear of corn into the Baker’s hand, telling him to feed the cow the hair of the corn, and it works, thank whomever. 

The Witch drinks the potion. 

He feels something snap inside of him, something cold fill his bones with warmth. 

He’s going to have a child, that’s the real important thing, he’s going to have a baby and he’s going to raise them with the help of his wife. 

* * *

His wife is dead. 

His _wife _is_ dead__, _and here is the Witch throwing a hissy fit over the fact that they don’t want to sacrifice a little boy to a lady giant. 

She, though powerless in all her beauty, spits magic in the way only one who has studied it their entire lives can. 

She tells them she is right. 

She tells them that he is a liar and a cheat as his father was and as his son will be. 

She tells them this as she scatters her beans to the ground, throwing them down one by one, and it is all he can think to do to scramble to pick them up. 

He can’t breathe as she screams at the four of them – the Baker, Cinderella, Jack, and Red. 

He can’t breathe through the grief. 

He can’t breathe through his previous anger. 

He can’t breathe through his current anger. 

He can’t breathe through the magic that drags itself out of him, crawling its way out of his pores as his skin starts to glow. 

He burns golden in a way nobody else can see, digging blazing magic into her, bright and shiny the way he himself is. 

Everything is bright, bright, bright. 

The magic that tethered itself to him, before like ice in his freezing veins, has been detached from its creator and left to fester inside of him, turning to golden fire that pours from him. 

Only he can see it as it twirls around the Witch’s ankles and up her legs and around her dress. 

She asks to be taken away from them. 

She calls them idiots. 

He thinks that really it is she that was not so intelligent as golden smoke wraps its way around her neck and pulls her into the ground. 

He will leave the woods untouched by magic. 


End file.
